Altruism Social Behavior Empathy: Selfless

Altruism

Social Behavior

Empathy: Selfless identification or selfless aid?

The experimental psychologist Daniel Batson (1981) defined empathy as the degree to which another human being is able to selflessly identify with another individual's plight. In one experiment, he subjected an individual known as 'Elaine' to mild electric shocks. Elaine was, in fact, a confederate of the experimenters, not a fellow test subject as the actual subject was lead to believe. The real test subject was asked, after Elaine was subjected to two shocks, if he or she would change places with Elaine. Different variables were introduced into the experiment to increase the likelihood of empathy with the subject. The experiment also involved two scenarios -- one in which the test subject was given an easy 'escape' (he or she was given the option of leaving, after witnessing two shocks) or a difficult 'escape' (he or she would have to witness ten shocks).

For example, Elaine was described as someone with similar values to the test subject, as well as someone who had previously experienced a traumatic incident when she was electrically shocked by accident. An 'easy' escape and a low rate of empathic sameness tended to result in people refusing to switch. An easy escape and a high rate of perceived similarity increased the likelihood that the subject would switch places, and mimicked more closely the scenario when the test subject was put into a situation where it was difficult to politely extricate him or herself from switching places. Another experiment confirming Batson's belief in the existence of empathy can be found in the case of his 'Janet' experiment, whereby a confederate 'Janet' read a sad story -- after being induced into a high or low empathic state, subjects were asked how much time they would like to spend with Janet. High empathy test subjects reported a desire to spend longer period of time with Janet than those in lower empathic states.

However, according to Cialdini (1987), purely empathetic identification does not originate with a forgetting of the self and identification with another human being, but is designed to alter a personal feeling of discomfort. Cialdini's experiments suggested "an observer of a suffering other is likely to react in one of two primary ways to the victim's plight: by reducing the other's need through helping or by escaping the situation. The egoistically motivated observer would be expected to choose the option entailing the smallest personal cost…. An altruistically motivated observer, however, should be principally concerned with reducing the other's suffering" (Cialdini et al. 1987, p.750). The focus is always on the self, in other words and the intensity of the need to relieve one's personal pain, not the pain of the subject. 'True' empathy, after all, would mean that subjects were always willing to change places with Elaine even if they had the option of leaving and did not have to witness more shocks.

Cialdini suggests that even apparently altruistic subjects seemed to be motivated more from a 'sadness-cancelling' mechanism than actual altruism. In one study, subjects were given what they erroneously believed to be a mood 'fixing' drug -- "empathic subjects were more helpful than their nonempathic counterparts only when it seemed possible that their personal moods could be raised as a consequence of helping. High-empathy subjects who learned that their saddened mood states could not be altered by the helping act (because of the temporary action of a "mood-fixing drug") did not help at enhanced levels, despite their still-elevated empathic-concern scores" (Cialdini et al. 1987, p. 757). The proposition of a financial reward in exchange for nonempathetic behavior also reduced the subject's generosity -- the selfish pleasure from the reward reduced the selfish desire to reduce the anxiety from 'doing nothing,' Cialdini hypothesized.

Interestingly, only female subjects were used in the test, and Cialdini notes that they were psychology students. This raises several questions: firstly, might male and female empathic responses differ? Also, the idea of a 'mood stabling drug' seems to lack credibility to some extent, and perhaps the students might suspect that they were being lied to, given their experience with basic psychology. The same might be true with Batson's subjects, especially given the famed Stanley Milgram experiments involving electroshock therapy, which were also conducted under false pretexts.